- Never Second in Rome is out! - 6 May 2026
I'm happy to announce the full release of my new game, Never Second in Rome!While it has many things in common with A Legionary's Life, there are also a lot of big differences.In Never Second in Rome, you start as a freshly appointed centurion in Caesar's army, skilled and well-equipped from the beginning, though of course there's plenty of room for further growth.In addition to the main character, you control the unit under his command and several individuals within it.Battles are fought both at formation level and at individual level. The two aspects strongly influence each other.While Never Second in Rome, unlike A Legionary's Life, was not designed with meta-progression and permadeath in mind, the full launch release has introduced an optional Ironman mode that includes both features. It is unlocked after finishing the standard game at least once.Some elements that were random-based…
- Update 2025 10 04 - 4 October 2025
Patched Unity's CVE-2025-59489. I have also updated the free demo.
- Early Access launch on February 18 - 12 February 2025
I'm thrilled to announce that Never Second in Rome is entering Early Access on February 18 at 17:00 CET (08:00 PST). The initial version will contain 10 fully playable chapters extending from the beginning of Caesar's Gallic campaign to the siege of Alesia. The free demo will remain available even after the official release, so that you can try the game before you buy it. However, I have been making a lot of small changes and tweaks since the last demo version (0.5.1) was published. I'm going to release an up-to-date build on the day Early Access launches. I expect Never Second in Rome to stay in Early Access for longer than A Legionary's Life, possibly for about a year, but it's difficult to predict with certainty at this stage. Whether you decide to jump on board as soon as possible or prefer to wait until the full release, please remember to wishlist the game if you haven't already d…
- Five years - 25 September 2024
I almost didn't notice that today is the fifth anniversary of the release of a Legionary's Life. It is gratifying to see that this game is still being played and remembered by so many people after such a long time. And may I just say, without your constant support during these five years I would never have been able to work on a new game, the recently announced Never Second in Rome. Thank you for making it possible!
- Never Second in Rome announced! - 3 September 2024
After well over four years of development, the time is ripe to unveil my next game: Never Second in Rome. As guessed by some of you, it is set during Caesar's campaigns. If you have played A Legionary's Life, you will find familiar concepts, but there are also many big differences. They are too many to mention here, but here are some of the most important: In A Legionary's Life you are a conscripted ordinary citizen at the beginning of the game. In Never Second in Rome you will start off as a freshly promoted centurion. You will not only control your character, but also your century and specific individuals within it. The character generation in A Legionary's Life is random. This is not the case in Never Second in Rome, which uses completely different mechanisms. Main battles are experienced not only at individual level as in A Legionary's Life, but also at formation level. Individual f…
- Update 1.3.14 - 14 September 2020
It is almost a year since the game came out of early access and was released in its first complete form. I want to thank once again all of you players who have spent words of support and appreciation here on Steam and elsewhere. Today's update offers a description for each enemy type, a few little improvements that should help new players get their bearings faster and a couple of minor balance adjustments. Changes I have added a brief description to over 40 enemy types. The description can be seen in the details screen of each enemy, below the name. It should provide more background information to players who are not familiar with the time period, and also add more depth to the encounters. Special thanks to flori2412, who once again offered to translate all the new content into German for free. Fights against enemies who have the terrain advantage are preceded by an alert that explains…
- Update 1.3.10 - 15 June 2020
The main reason for today's update is to fix a couple of bugs that have been reported recently. While very difficult to stumble upon, they had the potential to be fairly annoying. I have also taken the opportunity to apply a few minor balance tweaks. Fixes Fixed a bug that could prevent ambushes from triggering at the appropriate time. Fixed a bug that could make a fight freeze at its conclusion. Flori2412 sent me a couple of corrections to his German translation, which I thankfully applied. Changes The hand-to-hand fights against phalangites now last 24 rounds instead of 20. The difficulty of the rolls for the first three places of the elite javelin contest based on distance (part of the contests you can select shortly after your first raid in Upper Macedonia) has been reduced a little. Your share of the loot after the siege of New Carthage is now 120 denarii instead of 80. If you volu…
- Update 1.3.7 - 15 April 2020
Here's what's new in today's small update: The first change requires a little explanation: as the majority of you already know, when fighters use the Recover action and have not been attacked since their last turn, the action succeeds automatically with no roll involved. As usual, it is true for both player and AI controlled characters. This is already explained in both the action tooltip and the combat manual, but I decided to make it more noticeable. From now on, whenever a character benefits from an automatically successful Recover action, the message will be "Succeeded! (Undisturbed)" instead of the ordinary "Succeeded!". The combat log will also contain a more detailed explanation. I hope this makes the mechanism a little more conspicuous, especially to new players. Flori2412 kindly provided some refinements to his German translation. I have imported them into the game. The impleme…
- "A Legionary's Life" now also in German - jetzt auch auf Deutsch - 25 March 2020
Over the course of the last months flori2412 has been working on a fan-made, entirely volunteer German translation of A Legionary's Life. Now this considerable amount of work (the text is nearly as long as an average novel) is completed, and his translation is available to everyone with newly-released version 1.3.5. You can set the language in the main menu: the control is in the top-right corner of the screen. Despite the fact that it is a fan-made translation, the attention to details and the care that emerged while talking with Flori are nothing short of professional work. This is a difficult game to translate; quality work requires an excellent knowledge of both the game and its historical context. Flori, you have my deepest gratitude for this extraordinary contribution. Deutsch In den letzten Monaten hat flori2412 an einer vollkommen freiwilligen deutschen Fan-Übersetzung von A Leg…
- Update 1.3.1 - 24 February 2020
There are several important news regarding the combat system. Visible chance of full success for Feints and Shield Attacks Actions like Feints and Shield attacks have always had two indicators: the first represents the primary, mostly Skill based check, and the second represents the chance to overcome the opponent's resistance (based on Awareness for all Feints, but also on Quickness for Quick Feints). A full success requires the attacker to pass both checks. When they saw two circles showing a chance of success of about 70%, some players assumed that the overall chance was about the same, but combined probability doesn't work that way and the chance was much lower than they expected. This led to a lot of misunderstandings about the fairness of the RNG. To avoid such confusion in the future, I have added a third indicator that calculates the combined probability for your convenience and…
- Update 1.2.7 - 10 February 2020
I had to fix a glitch affecting the Health bar and wanted to add a very small feature that was quite straightforward to implement, then I decided I might as well try tweaking a few parameters. Workouts are initially 50% more likely to improve your Attributes. The odds will drop a little faster than before the farther you get from the initial value. Overall, the progression curve is significantly more favorable to the player and I think it also makes more sense than before. Similarly, your mental Attributes will improve more often when you successfully complete a foraging mission or show good leadership. The chance to skip a combat turn because of slow speed has been decreased. If a character has a Quickness score of 50, the chance to skip a turn and the chance to obtain an extra action are now the same (assuming full Stance, no Fatigue and Content Morale). Suboptimal Stance and levels o…
- Update 1.2.2 - 11 December 2019
Today's update is very small, but important. Besides a minor accessory improvement to the engine, I have made a few tweaks that will affect the balance of the earlier phases of the game. Your Sword, Shield and Javelin Skills will start at 29, 29 and 26 respectively, instead of 29/29/29. However, now after the first main battle you get a 5-point bonus to all your Skills instead of 3, and 4 points after the second. This is to reflect the fact that his first real combat experience and his first pitched battle should deeply affect your legionary's confidence and reliability in a fight. To accomodate for the lower starting value of the Javelin Skill, the safe option for your first javelin throw (the one where you just aim for the mass of enemies in front of you instead of picking off a specific target) is less demanding. More importantly, improvements while using the basic sparring training…
- Update 1.2: full localization support, fixes and minor changes - 26 November 2019
I haven't done it in a while, so before talking about this patch, I'd like to thank all of you who have shown support and appreciation; unconventional indie games such as this can only exist thanks to your constant encouragement. As for today's update: Added full localization support. Well, the game had already been developed with potential localization in mind, but some less urgent aspects were postponed. A certain fellow legionary whose life you can save in Hispania should be a little more resilient. During the third main battle, there is now an opportunity to change your equipment after the scouting mission. The way the persistence of the Hall of Fame is handled has been changed to allow a more user-friendly approach in case something very unfortunate happens, like a power shortage at the exact moment the file is being written. The solution adopted in a previous version wasn't effect…
- Update 1.1.14 - 21 October 2019
Several changes are related to foraging missions, including a couple of rare but nasty bugs. I have also extended the tooltips of Feints and Shield attacks to avoid misunderstandings about the effective chance of success of actions that have two indicators: the actual chance is the combined chance of both indicators. In short, if the "H" indicator of a Feint shows a chance of 70% and the "C" indicator shows 40, the combined chance of success is 28%. You might pass the first "H" check and fail the second, in which case the action is Resisted, producing a reduced effect. From several reviews and comments I have read in the past few weeks, it seems that many players assume the overall chance roughly amounts to the higher of the two indicators. Among other changes, there is the ability to adjust your Attitude before combat begins, even when there is no opportunity to throw a javelin. Here i…
- Update 1.1.4 - 8 October 2019
List of changes in version 1.1.4 When characters fail to Recover twice in a row, their chance to succeed is increased by 16% for each further consecutive attempt. The increase is 8% if the character is Fatigued and 4% if Tired. Exhausted character do not benefit from this bonus. Like every rule, this applies to both the player and the AI controlled characters. Success is still guaranteed for characters who have not been attacked for a whole round. The AI should Respite more often, especially when it is more fatigued than its opponent(s). During the third battle, your Fatigue is partially reduced before you are attacked by the light infantry. The way the Hall of Fame is saved has been changed to protect it from potential data corruption in case of extremely unlucky events, like power shortages happening at the exact moment the file is being written. Ambushes in forests during foraging mi…
- A Legionary's Life v 1.0 Released! - 25 September 2019
When I began developing A Legionary's Life, a little over two years ago, the day of release was a destination so distant I could barely see it. There was so much to do to make it possible, it was scary to think about. It has been a daunting task, working alone on such a long-term project, and many of the challenges it presented were entirely new to me. I wish to thank all the players who have written words of appreciation and encouragement, everyone who has helped promote the game, the users who have been giving guidance and useful tips to newcomers and those who have offered advice and suggestions to me during these five months of Early Access. What is new in version 1.0 Successful attacks on limbs increase the victim's Fatigue, based on the damage received. You can find more details in the tooltip of the specific Attack. This should serve the double purpose of offering a new tactical…
- Official release date - 10 September 2019
I am elated to announce that A Legionary's Life will be released on September 25, 2019. As I mentioned earlier, the big update of two weeks ago pretty much completed the story and content. The next update will consist of small new features, tweaks and fixes aimed at polishing the game.
- Update 0.19.3 - 29 August 2019
This is arguably the most important update since the Early Access began: it delivers the third and last campaign, set during the Second Macedonian War. It consists of 3 parts, 9 new random events, many fixed events (they range from a couple of lines to more complex situations), new enemies, encounters and a few hidden treasures. There is another important change affecting the loss of Morale when you pick too many extra training sessions and workouts. The new system is a lot more transparent, less annoying, and it should make your choices during the Lull phases more interesting. It also makes it harder to reach high Skill levels, but that ultimately depends on how much Morale you are willing to sacrifice as you strive for perfection (the training progression is the same as version 0.12.8 anyway). Because of this, the Skill perks (Natural Swordsman and Aegis Embodiment) should have a larg…
- The upcoming Second Macedonian War: release date and future plans - 13 August 2019
As I mentioned in my previous announcement, the update containing the Second Macedonian War and the ending will be released on August 29th. With that, A Legionary's Life will be complete and playable from the beginning to the end. But there is more: contrary to my original intentions, the Early Access phase is not going to end with this update. I have decided I don't want to rush the final release. I will use a little more time to gather feedback from you so I can polish and balance the game before it's really considered finished. I can't tell you how long this new stage will last: according to my current plans, the final release should happen in early October, but I have not yet taken a definitive decision; it depends on too many factors. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your fantastic support. Though I can't reply to everyone and I certainly can't implement e…
- Update 0.12.8 - 8 August 2019
This update was not planned, but it became necessary after a couple of problems were reported. As a consequence, some balance changes that were aimed at accommodating the yet unreleased parts set in Greece are present before their intended time. Well, no harm done: it's a good chance to get some feedback on them. At the current pace, I think I should be able to release the full game at the end of this month. If all goes well, an official announcement should follow shortly. Features and changes You can now modify your equipment during some battle phases, if circumstances allow. There is an icon on the Inventory button to point out that you can view your equipment but cannot change it. Equipment penalties are suspended if you visit the Numidian camp, since you are supposed to be under disguise and without your usual equipment. If you meet a patrol of spearmen during a random event, you'll…
